More books

Haven't had much time for book cataloguing recently. My books are in Oxford, I'm in Tbilisi. Too much of a backlog to allow for buying new books. Not much time even to read them.

But today I managed to add a few to my list on Librarything, which is a wonderful online cataloguing system for books. I first found it on Stepping Stones blog (though it's gone now) and I quickly became addicted as it is so easy, and you can even get an ISBN scanner. What's more it has just got a lot better and easier. They are busy adding library catalogues from across the world, as well as linking to Amazon etc. That means that most of your books are already on there complete with the covers, so all you have to do is type in the title and author (or scan the ISBN) and there is your book, complete with links to reviews by other Librarythingers.

There are 25 million books in the catalogue with coming up to half a million members. Plus there is all the social networking stuff and opportunities to look at other people's libraries, including famous (live and dead) people.

The largest private library to date is 40,000 books. In my humble way I was pleased to see that our family total (around 1750) makes me number 1765 in size of library. There's a widget on the side of my blog showing a random selection of the books. It constantly surprises me about books I have forgotten I have got.

It also comes in several languages, encouraging people to add books from several national libraries in Europe.



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